Perversion the Social Relation

Contamination's Germinations 193The plot's order makes it clear that the Airborne Toxic Event is notthe climax of White Noise, since this event occurs, almost self-contained,in the second of three sections of the novel, but ending exactly halfwayto the end of the text. With the third section picking up on threads fromthe first, the narrative seems as though it will culminate with the conferencein Hitler studies. Hosting this conference is ostensibly what hastriggered Jack's compensatory obsessions. He both wants the attentionhis role as host of this Germanically focused conference promises to affordhim and fears that his utter ignorance of German will reveal him asa hoax. At one level, the mastery he seeks is not some immortal capabilitybut simply the sense that he is who he is reputed to be, that he canlive up to the image he feels he projects with his academic robe and darkglasses, the intellectual man of mystery. His anxiety is narcissistic, focusedon the hope that, as Copjec describes narcissism, his "own beingexceeds the imperfection of its image." 10 This narcissism is linked withJack's Teutonophilia, indicating that this narcissism is deeper, driveoriented.But this link does not mean that the drive to be with Germansis about Jack individually; rather, the narcissism angle is already alignedwith Jack's dispersion, which the narrative drive of Teutonophilia effectsover the course of the text. Precisely because the novel does not end here,at the Hitler studies conference, it's not about Jack consolidating hisidentity and mastery—and thus not about the death drive—but ratherabout how Jack is dispersing into particles, driven to see himself, hisfamily, his social situation, as "particle-ized."Thus, rather than end the novel, Jack's comic failure to master theceremony or the language in his conference address propels him towardanother Teutonic situation. Only when he learns that his rival, WillieMink, is in nearby Iron City's Germantown—indeed, only when helearns that Iron City even has a Germantown 11 —does Jack finally pursuethe dispenser of Dylar with whom his wife Babette has slept. Eventhough he has known of Babette's infidelity and indeed cajoled fromher the adulterer's name, and even though this man is the source forBabette's acquisition of a drug that dispels the fear of death, what catalyzeshim out of his ambivalence into action is not the information, butthe Teutonophilic drive.Gladney's drive to find Mink hurtles him willy-nilly to act against hisdesire for stasis, quiescence, repetition; it is a drive that is quite literally